1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for controlling different devices that are included in a computer system.
2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, computer systems are provided with chipsets to control interactions between different devices that are included in the computer systems. Current mainstream chipsets, listed in “ASCII24”, online, search on Aug. 5, 2004, URL:http://ascii24.com/news/columns/10104/article/2000/06/06/619437-000.html, are configured from north bridge and south bridge circuits. Hereinafter, a south bridge circuit is designated by “operations system core I/O device bridge”.
FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an exemplary conventional computer system. The computer system includes a central processing unit (CPU) cluster, a memory cluster, a memory controller, an input/output (I/O) controller, a system controlling apparatus, an operations system core I/O device bridge, and a plurality of I/O device bridges. The system controlling apparatus controls, via the I/O controller, the CPU cluster, the memory cluster, the memory controller, the operations system core I/O device bridge, and the I/O device bridges.
The operations system core I/O device bridge performs an important role in the computer system. The operations system core I/O device bridge controls a flow of data between the I/O controller and a firmware device (FWD), a video graphics array (VGA), and a system management LAN controller (SLAN). The operations system core I/O device bridge causes the FWD to maintain information, such as a BIOS and the system configuration that are necessary for operating the computer system, and utilizes this information to operate the computer system.
However, the conventional computer systems are equipped with only one operations system core I/O device bridge. Therefore, when the operations system core I/O device bridge fails, the entire system stops and the system cannot be rebooted until the faulty operations system core I/O device bridge is replaced with a properly functioning operations system core I/O device bridge. Thus, there was a problem of not being able to quickly restore the system. If the computer system is used as a server and has a faulty operations system core I/O device bridge, delays in system rebooting become more serious.